Bothroyd on his way to Everton | The Sun |Sport|Football
Everton manager Moyes believes Bothroyd, 29, can be as successful as Jermaine Beckford, who was snapped up on a free from Leeds a year ago and went on to score 10 times in his first season.
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
The fact that Beckford scored ten times for Everton - only eight in the league - surprises me, but not as much as the lowered expectations of Moyes and Everton. If Bothroyd can only be as successful as Beckford - who looked lost in the Premier League for much of the season - then he won't be a very successful buy at all. And Everton will continue to rely on Louis Saha's goals... which they can't rely on, and haven't relied on. To the detriment of their league standing.
I know there are financial issues at play, but this just won't work in today's Premier League landscape. The likes of Spurs and Villa (not to mention Arsenal, Manchester City, and Liverpool) will be thrilled to read today's "news".
That is twice as many Premier League goals as Jermain Defoe scored.
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But no one's calling Defoe's season as successful one.
ReplyDeleteGuess it depends if Bothroyd is expected to be an improvement over Beckford or just another squad forward who really only needs to be an improvement over Vaughn and Anichebe to be worth the time and money.
ReplyDeleteOn Beckford, it isn't a huge shock that a young forward took most of a season to adapt to the Prem. I don't know if he'll get better but if "looking lost most of the season" equated to 8 goals and he started figuring it out toward the end then he might come into next year as a solid 12 goal man. Not a star by any means but certainly not bad as only 14 players scored 12 or more this past season. 8 of those 14 were on teams that finished above EVE and two of them (Adam and DJ Campbell) have been relegated. Again, not saying that Beckford WILL do those things but certainly not an unreasonable progression and it would put him among the better forwards outside the Top 6.